the monsters running wild inside of me
by sharoncarters
Summary: Somehow, Bucky always knew that a pretty girl would be the end of him. / Soulmates AU.


this fic is really me just playing around with pain and angst, what can i say

* * *

Where are you now?

Atlantis

Under the sea

Under the sea

Where are you now?

Another dream

The monster's running wild inside of me

I'm faded

\- Alan Walker, Faded

* * *

Bucky's a no good, disgusting, bottom-feeding piece of shit, but that doesn't stop Steve from being his best friend anyway. That's what makes this entire shit-show that much worse. And he didn't even ask for it, you know, was perfectly happy fucking Natasha 'till kingdom come with no responsibilities and a black hole in his brain the size of the war, and that would've been just fine. It would've been, if Steve hadn't insisted that Bucky meet her.

Not that it's Steve's fault, because it's not. It's Bucky's fault that his own black heart did this to him, that his one chance at real happiness was at the expense of the person that he arguably loved more than anyone else in the world. Thanks a lot for that, universe, by the way.

* * *

It's the stupid words, of course. Steve doesn't have any, and no one really knows why, bar the fact that his soulmate hasn't been born yet (they both reject this idea, because Steve's not really into younger women, and he's not a predator besides), or maybe he just doesn't have a soulmate. They reject that too. Steve and his ever-growing optimism, that way of his that he looks at the world. If anyone deserves a soulmate, it's Steve. Not Bucky.

Natasha does, but Bucky's never asked her about them. They're both private people, and this thing that they have doesn't really work if they start actually talking. They might find out that they hate each other, and that would be counterproductive to the long series of decent sexcapades that they've had going. He's seen 'em in passing on the small of her back, a few words scribbled in handwriting that looks like chicken-scratch. She just makes him flip her over and they go at it like that, and he doesn't ask any questions.

Bucky's never quite known what to make of his own. It's neat, he'll give it that, which is one of the first of many reasons why he doesn't understand it. He'd always thought that his soulmate would be just as fucked up as him, someone hurt just as much as he had been. Which, he doesn't really know what neat handwriting has to do with it, but it's the idea of the thing, you know? People with neat handwriting usually have their shit together, at least in his experience.

* * *

It all came down to those stupid words on his wrist, which really fucking ruined his entire life, Bucky thinks, they really did. Because how do you tell your best friend that the first time you meet the love of his life you realize that she's what you've been waiting for forever? After everything that Steve's been through, how could Bucky do that to him? Steve and Sharon are happy. They're in love and they're engaged and they're _happy_. And then he had to go and screw it all up.

Bucky wants to be happy with Natasha, he really does. But something about them has never quite… clicked. They go together in other ways, of course, but whenever he's with her all he can do is think about the words on her back, so unlike his own handwriting. He wants what Steve and Sharon have more than anything, the easy phone calls and the effortless way that Steve ends them with "I love you".

A weird series of events lead Bucky to be free for meeting Sharon when Steve finally invites him over to meet her. The first being a day called in sick from work for no reason besides the fact that Bucky can't be bothered, and the other being Steve and Sharon taking the weekend off to plan the wedding. Steve and Sharon had been together for years now, but there had been the war, and then Bucky's work after kept him busy and out of the country, and Natasha kept him in her bed when he came back.

Bucky detaches himself from Nat for the first time in months and makes his way over to their new apartment. He has no idea what he's expecting when he knocks on the door, but it's definitely something other than what he gets.

The way that it's always been described to Bucky, the whole "meeting your soulmate" thing, is that it's like everything clicks into place. Like a breath of fresh air, like a drink of water after having none for weeks. He doesn't expect it to be like this. He doesn't expect it to hurt, like a sharp kick to the ribs, and he doesn't expect to completely regret the moment that it happens.

"Look who finally let you come up for air," is the first thing Sharon says to him when she opens the door. It's quick, casual, something that she has every right to say after months of Steve telling them both about each other and her friendship with Natasha. How they haven't met yet, Bucky has no idea, and the second she opens her mouth he wishes they never had.

(He always seems to just miss her, calling Steve a minute after she leaves for work, Skyping Steve and having to leave before Sharon gets back. A flash of blonde hair here, a laugh from the other room there, an online status somewhere else.)

Bucky's hand is paused in mid-air, mouth agape, and when he finally speaks he feels like he can't breathe and he's shaking his head. The skin on his wrist burns as he looks at Sharon, whose eyebrows are scrunched together in confusion. "This can't be happening," he says, yanking his arm back as if he's been electrocuted.

Sharon jumps at his words, grabbing her own arm and staring at it as if she can will the words written there to change. But neither of them can. That's not how this works. They stare at each other for the longest time until Sharon finally speaks.

"No," she says, and that's the end of it. All of Bucky's current and future thoughts fly out the window, and his point of focus narrows down to her grabbing his wrist and tugging him inside the apartment. It's fleeting, the burn of it, the quick grab of his wrist to pull him inside before she's gone. But he feels it, feels it creep up on him like when he was a child and burned himself on the stove, the absent press of his hand to the heat and the few seconds of nothing before the white-hot pain.

They've been standing at the door for too long. Steve calls from the kitchen. "Share, was that Bucky?" Bucky sees her swallow, unable to form words.

"Uh huh," she finally manages to call back. Bucky's still staring. What a horrible, sickening, unbelievable mess.

* * *

Sharon is sick with it, the wanting. Because the thing is, she loves Steve. She loves him. She can feel it in her bones, how much she loves him, can feel it when she wakes up with him and goes to sleep with him and sits on the couch with him.

Sharon had never really cared that she had words. They weren't a big deal to her, the slightly loopy letters on her forearm, because no one ever spoke them to her (at least, no one ever spoke those words to her the first time that they met, which was the prerequisite for this kind of thing), so they didn't matter.

Steve hadn't had words and he'd been up front with it when he met her at the Academy, and Sharon had thought that his honesty was new and refreshing, something that she could rally behind. _He_ was someone that she could rally behind, someone that she could count on. She was sick of teenage girls wishing for their soulmates, for movies depicting every type of romance possible under the sun, all to accommodate those stupid, awful words.

"I want to fall in love on my own terms," Steve had said, the first time that he kissed her. Sharon had been so afraid, then, afraid of life and Hydra and Aunt Peggy's impending death, afraid of falling for someone who wasn't her soulmate, afraid of losing him if he ever found his. "Don't you want that? Free will?"

It had seemed so simple when he phrased it like that. Steve and Sharon, team free will, falling in love because they wanted to, not because some stupid words told them that they had to.

"I want to," Sharon had told him. "So much."

And now there's this: this pull that she feels for Bucky even when he's not there. It's like she can feel his heart beating, fast and irregular, in time with her own. She keeps thinking about him, the fact of his prosthetic arm, a story that neither Steve nor Bucky himself had ever told her about. The way that he tended to look at her with awe and disbelief and she always knew it, because eyes find eyes, but he always looked away before she could catch him at it.

There's the fact of Steve, the wedding, the diamond sitting on her finger that she can never stop twisting around. She doesn't know what to do with herself anymore.

* * *

Bucky calls her and then hangs up. Every time, multiple times, a nuisance and a lingering feeling of hope that has Sharon sitting on the edge of her seat at work, jumping every time that her phone rings. It's never for long, and it always stops before she can answer, but she manages to intercept it one Friday after a long meeting.

"It's just never going to be me and you, okay? Please just… stop. It's cruel, what you're doing, okay? It really is. I never wanted any of this and I don't want you and it's just too much. So please just stop."

There's a rustling, the sharp sound of Bucky realizing that he's been caught, his shaky breaths before he answers her. "Okay. Okay."

The heart is a frightening, wanting thing. Sharon wants very much for hers to stop asking for things that she can't have.

* * *

"I can't do this to him. I wish you would just—just leave it alone." Sharon sighs, scratches at her arm.

"We can just pretend it never happened and then we'll both be happy and everything will go back to normal, yeah?" It's not a question, really, not for Bucky. He knows that it's not. He gives her a self-deprecating laugh. Sharon tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. He takes a step (she's happy, leave her alone, Buck, don't—) she lets out a surprised sound, her phone rings, she jumps.

"Hey," she answers. Bucky looks down, lets out a breath. "Yeah, no. I'm just leaving. Okay, yeah. Sounds good."

"Steve?" he asks.

Sharon nods. "Steve."

Bucky wonders why it feels like such a betrayal. (Her betraying him, him betraying Steve, the both of them betraying Steve, Steve's phone-call ruining the entire moment. Bucky doesn't know who he is anymore.)

* * *

It would be so much easier if Steve was a horrible person, it really would be. But he's not. He is the best thing that's ever happened to her, and Sharon has ruined it.

* * *

Bucky can't help himself, simply because she's there, because she's breathing and she's there and he can _feel_ it, like she's surrounding him. God. She's standing on her tip-toes, trying to reach for a plate in one of the top cabinets in the kitchen. Steve's… who knows where, really, because Bucky is practically seeing red at this point and he just wants it to stop. So he presses his palm against the small of her back, pressure light but purposeful as he reaches around her to grab for the plate. Sharon gasps, a small, desperate sound, and Bucky wants her to do it again.

Instead she stands still, shivering, waiting for him to pull his hand away. He can't.

"Please," Sharon says, eyes fluttering closed, and it cuts at him, deep, the desperate way that she says it. He presses harder, just for a second. Sharon tries to escape, but she's already pressed against the counter as far as she can go. She rocks up onto her toes, away from him. "Please." He pulls away, in time to escape what would've been a disaster had Steve walked into the kitchen a second sooner. It snaps Bucky back to reality and he feels sick. He can't look Steve in the eye.

* * *

Bucky knows it's bad when he starts having dreams, because he's never been much of a dreamer. That was always Steve. But now Bucky dreams about her, and it's terrible, the wanting, because he knows that he can never have it.

He wants to whisk her away, take her to Paris, where they can be who they want to be and be together, living in a shitty apartment and knowing absolutely fuck all about France or speaking French, and they'd sleep in the same bed and he'd make her breakfast and they'd be in love. Like they're fucking supposed to be.

It shouldn't be this hard. It's not supposed to be this awful, but it is, and it whittles away at him more and more each day. Jesus. He wants to take Sharon on a road trip and hear her sing, maybe, and they'd buy junk food and eat it in the car and he could lick ice cream off of her skin and then they'd shower together in some shitty motel down the road.

What Bucky wants, more than anything, is just a chance.

* * *

When Bucky was a kid, he liked to read stories. It was stupid. A stupid little kid and his stupid dreams, wanting to save a princess and slay a dragon and make a difference. That's what he thought he was doing when he went away to the war. And then he met the guys in his regiment and he realized a lot of things, most of them having to deal with soulmates.

There weren't really that many stories of it going wrong, you know? Not where he was from. Steve was the only anomaly, but that was just Steve. Steve was already different, timeless, a face that transcended decades and silly things like soulmates. Bucky had words, his lowlife parents had words, that was just how it worked.

And then the guys in his regiment, man. They were some fucked up guys. He was friends with them anyway, but it was different. There was this one guy, Larry, an unfortunate name if you asked anyone, whose words were spoken by this twelve year old girl that he and his sister had babysitted when they were teenagers. Imagine that shit. Being nineteen and having matching words with a fucking kid. Larry didn't do anything about it, of course, choosing the (smart, in Bucky's opinion) option of going off to war to get away from it.

There was this other guy, Max, who had burned off his words. He never said why, but shit, Bucky never stopped thinking about it. The patchwork of corroded skin, red and white, the scars left over from the grafts. What could be that bad, to cause someone to burn off his words? What person could be that awful, that instead of trying to deal with the whole soulmate thing, at least seeing if it could work, you'd physically harm yourself?

Bucky didn't get it before, be he sorta thinks he does now, because god. What kind of cosmic, fucking, universe-working-against-him, unbelievable bullshit is this? What did he do to deserve this goddamn shit, this torture, these endless feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt?

This whole thing with Sharon, this fucked up mess, this wanting, he sees it now. He pictures himself as Max, a twenty year old kid, locking the bathroom door and taking a lighter to his wrist, just to get rid of it. It wouldn't get rid of the feelings, of course, but it might do something. Absolution, maybe; a way out. A reason to never have to look at her again.

* * *

It's not that Sharon doesn't _want_ to have sex with Steve anymore, it's that she can't. Because she looks at him, at his beautiful, trusting face, and she feels like she's cheating. She'd never do anything to hurt him, would never go around with Bucky behind his back, but it doesn't stop her from _feeling_ like she is.

What she wants is to forget that Bucky exists, to live her life with Steve in peace without ever seeing him again. So she gives in.

"And what would you like to do this morning?" Steve asks the morning after, only slightly teasing. Sharon doesn't think she'll ever get over him, the kindness in his eyes. Kindness that she doesn't deserve, that she's never deserved, but that he gives to her anyway.

Sharon lets out a little hum of contentment, turning to bask in the stream of morning sunlight and Steve's presence. He trails his fingers up and down her arm. This moment, right now, makes Sharon think that she can still have it; have things the way that they used to be. If it was just this, just her and Steve, for the rest of her life, she'd be happy.

"I would like," she says, "to stay in this bed with you for the entire weekend and never leave."

"Does this have something to do with how quiet you were last night?"

A rustle of sheets. "I wasn't quiet."

"You weren't rambling, so yeah, that's kind of quiet. For you, at least." Steve pushes himself up on his elbow and pulls her into his chest. "Whatever it is, you can tell me. You know that, right?"

"I know. I love you."

"I love you too."

* * *

They were never alone in the same room together, never without Steve. It was too dangerous. There were things that Bucky wanted, things that he couldn't have, and nothing would stop him from taking them besides the steady, reassuring presence of his best friend. Steve, the constant reminder, the only solid thing that Bucky has ever had in his entire life.

Bucky needed him there, if only to control his own sick thoughts. Because ever since that first day, all he could think about was Sharon. Sharon, Sharon, Sharon. Her halo of blonde hair, the sharp bite of her tongue, her laugh and her voice and her being. He wonders why it feels like he's kissed her already every time he looks at that mouth of hers. Is it just his imagination, or something more? He doesn't know what he would do if he ever found out.

* * *

A knock on the door, the pad of soft, sock-clad footsteps towards it. It's the middle of the night. Sharon can't imagine who would be here this late, unless Steve has come home from a mission early, or something has gone horribly wrong at work. Either of those things could be devastating, so she just yanks the door open and hopes for the best.

Instead, she gets the worst.

"What are you doing here?" Sharon hisses, popping her head out of the door to look for witnesses. The last thing she needs is nosy old Mrs. Jenkins from C5 to rat her out.

Bucky looks awful, under-eye bags and all, so when he doesn't answer she just opens the door wider and lets him in. They settle on the couch, Sharon suddenly aware of her baggy tee pajamas and lack of bra and tries not to meet his eyes.

"I just… had to see you," he says, like that's all the explanation she needs. It's not… it's just not _enough_. They sit in silence for a long time, the sound of the city whizzing by outside. Sharon thinks she hears an ambulance and considers what would happen if she called one, just because.

"You…" Sharon shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Anything that she says will be completely wrong anyway. All of this is completely wrong, no matter what she does. "You just show up and you turn my insides out, you know that?" she asks, wringing her hands. "You've made me into this person that I don't want to be," she says quietly, and it's so different to the way that she usually speaks, light and lilting, never bothered. "I don't… I never wanted to be this person, this needy, awful _thing_. What have you done to me?" she asks. She still hasn't looked at him.

"I didn't want this either," he says. "Is that what you think of me? That I did this on purpose? He's my best fucking friend."

"I don't—" a hiccup, a desperate swipe of her hand across her face, "I don't know what to do."

* * *

"This isn't healthy," Bucky comments lightly when Sharon's the one that shows up at his apartment. "We can't keep doing this. I'm not good for you," he says, crossing his arms. He's blocking the entire doorway with his stupid, sculpted shoulders. "Not like Steve is."

"Shut up," Sharon says. "Shut up. You don't get to tell me what's good for me. Now let me in." She shoulders past him, not waiting for an invitation, and settles down on the couch. Bucky ignores the tingle of her bare skin sliding against his, refuses to let his mind wander, and locks the door behind him.

This is the most that they'll allow themselves, these weekly talks in the middle of the night. Anything else would be too much, too tempting, but this is okay. This is all they can have, and both of them are learning to live with it.


End file.
